Drew

Butera

And with that comes, presumably, the end of Butera’s playing career. The 38-year-old catcher had a lowly .542 OPS over parts of 12 major league seasons but was always regarded as a strong defender behind the plate.

This is a depth addition for Houston after Jason Castro went down with a knee injury over the weekend. Butera, 38, owns a weak .196/.252/.290 career batting line in the bigs.

Butera was designated for assignment last week and passed through waivers unclaimed. The veteran catcher is a career .196/.252/.290 hitter in parts of 12 seasons (553 games) at the major league level.

Butera appeared in 12 games for the Angels and struggled mightily at the plate, collecting just two hits in 32 at-bats. He’ll continue to provide organizational catching depth at Triple-A Salt Lake if he clears waivers.

The 37-year-old backstop hasn’t appeared in a big league game this season and is a career .198/.255/.294 hitter across 1437 plate appearances at the big league level. A glove-first catcher, Butera will make his Angels debut on Friday night against the Dodgers where he’ll bat ninth against Julio Urias.

Butera was released by the Rangers, but has elected to stay with the organization on a new minor-league deal. He’ll function as organizational catching depth at the team’s alternate training site or Triple-A Round Rock to open the 2021 season.

Butera signed a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training earlier this offseason, but the Rangers have elected to go with newly-acquired Jonah Heim and Jose Trevino as their primary backstops this season.

Unless the Rangers made further additions, the light-hitting Butera will compete with Aramis Garcia for a job backing up Jose Trevino. Butera has spent parts of 11 years in the majors, batting .198/.255/.294 in 1,437 plate appearances. He was 6-for-39 with no homers for the Rockies last year.

Butera will open the 2020 regular season as the Rockies’ No. 2 or No. 3 catcher. Tony Wolters should draw most of the starts behind the plate and Elias Diaz is also in the mix.

Butera, 36, has batted just .184/.257/.286 in 231 plate appearances at the major league level over the last two seasons. He will probably function mostly as organizational depth at catcher for the Rockies in 2020.